Some statistics about all robotic #LunarLanding attempts so far from 1965 to 2025 compiled from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon and https://scicomm.xyz/@AkaSci@fosstodon.org/114636519291241321 in which I only count those for which descent to the surface had been initiated, not missions lost at launch or on the way - in a nutshell ~70% of all landings by government agencies went well (essentially the same rate 60 years ago and now!) but only ~30% by private companies. Here goes ...
There have been two separate periods of soft lunar landing attempts of ca. a dozen years each, from 1965 to 1976 and 2013 to 2025 (ongoing) with a huge gap between them.
In the first interval there were 20 attempts with 13 successes (Luna 9, 13, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21 and 24 and Surveyor 1, 3, 5, 6 and 7), one partial success (Luna 23, counting as 50%) and 6 failures (Luna 5, 7, 8, 15 and 18 and Surveyor 4), so the success rate was 13.5/20 = 68 %. All missions were by - the Soviet and U.S. - governments.
In the second interval there were so far 14 attempts with 6 full successes (Chang'e-3, 4, 5 and 6, Vikram 2 and Blue Ghost), three partial successes (SLIM, IM-1 and 2, counting as 75%, 50% and 25%, respectively) and 5 failures (Beresheet, Vikram 1, Hakuto-R 1 and 2 and Luna 25) so the success rate was 7.5 / 14 = 54%.
But looking only at the government missions it was 72%, slighly up from 50 years ago. While for the commercial attempts it was only 29%. In total the success rate was 19 (18 government-run) missions out of 34 (28) attempts or 62% but 69% for governments only. And if you throw in the 6 Apollo landings, the total success rate rises to 68% and the government-only rate goes even up to 75%.
from my link log —
That fractal that's been up on my wall for 12 years.
https://chriskw.xyz/2025/05/21/Fractal/
saved 2025-05-23 htt…
An interview with Leah Belsky, OpenAI's VP of Education, as the startup competes with Google and others to offer premium AI tools to universities and students (Natasha Singer/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/technol…
50 years of reunification, the end of the second Indochina war, #Vietnam had a blast with a mammoth celebration. The nationalism is troubled but it goes strong. An entire day of a parade in Saigon and on TV, and we had a tank in the newspaper 🤷
Interesting, since it’s the final days abroad for us
»June 7: Initial release – first github commit for Kubernetes«
This was June 7, 2014, so 11 years ago. For some people, in IT everything older then 10 years already counts as vintage.
Source: https://blog.risingstack.com/the-history-of-kubernetes/
"As the West debates red lines and escalation risks, Ukraine’s spies are doing what no NATO agency dared: hunting Russian war criminals across three continents, from Moscow’s suburbs to Mali’s deserts — the very territories where Russia projected power unopposed for years.
Russia’s failed blitzkrieg birthed something far more dangerous than Ukrainian resistance — Ukrainian revenge."
CIA forged Ukraine's spy service into Mossad for Putin— now it can't make them stop
https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/06/08/cia-forged-ukraines-broken-spy-service-into-mossad-for-putin-now-it-cant-make-them-stop/
"It is fair to say that Microsoft spent at least the first five years of its history in relative obscurity. The first appearance of the name “Microsoft” on the pages of Byte was a short mention of their BASIC interpreter in an advertising on page 47 of the May 1977 issue. In contrast, page 34 of the same issue included an article about the Apple II by Steve Wozniak. The Woz and Gary Kildall were the biggest stars of the microcomputer industry at the end of the 1970s."
https://deprogrammaticaipsum.com/where-does-microsoft-want-to-go-today/
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, contracts must first go through an approval process led in part by a young man who worked as a Temple University food hall monitor last year.
A few weeks earlier, Politico reported on a different young man, just four years removed from high school, who was appointed to serve as the acting chief AI officer at the Department of Health and Human Services, while on leave from pursuing his undergraduate degree.
The problem is made w…
I'm 37 years old and I finally finished a #JRPG game for the first time in my life ( #SeaOfStars ).
I like them a lot, but I often get bored of the grinding, or I have to leave it for some time and when I come back I don't remember what I was doing.
Why I managed to finish it this time? Because I had more important, stressing and boring things to do instead, and my brain demanded procrastination. #ADHD
Extreme #Temperaturen in großen Seen haben sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten massiv verstärkt.
#Hitzewellen und #Kälteperioden sind heute über 100 % intensiver als vor 1996. Dies…